BMC Members Explain They Have Inherited All Their Wealth
Clara Lewis | TNN
An IIT-IIM qualification isn’t the only ticket to big bucks. Ask BMC’s
corporators, whose meteoric rags-to-riches stories could put the most
imaginative Bollywood scripts in the shade. A place in the country’s richest
municipal corporation guarantees a never-ending supply of moolah. Little
wonder, then, there is a mad scramble for tickets for the BMC elections next
month.
Shocking tales of power and corruption would come tumbling out of the
BMC house if the authorities bothered to compare corporators’ declaration of
income with their ostentatious lifestyles. The transition from local trains
to Hondas or Innovas, however, is made smoothly and swiftly without anyone
batting an eyelid.
Check out a resort en route to Goa owned by a former BMC corporator.
Before entering the BMC, he was just another ordinary party worker. “The BMC
changes lives,” he told this reporter.
A two-time Shiv Sena corporator from Goregaon started life as an
autorickshaw driver. He now owns a flat and drives a car. He claimed the
huge flat was given to his family after their home was demolished. The car,
he said, belonged to his friend, before switching off his mobile phone to
avoid further questions.
But he should not be worried; there is nothing that is secret about the
culture of corruption. Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray, at a Girgaum Chowpatty
rally in 2002, publicly pointed to corporators who had fattened themselves
on BMC cream. Berating those planning to rebel for not being given a ticket,
he had declared: “Tumcha pot bharlay, aata dusryana khau dya (your stomach
is filled, let others eat now).”
The BMC, according to corporators themselves, offers plenty of
money-making opportunities. A contractor is only too willing to offer a “cut”
to bag a project. Reserved public land can be offered for setting up gyms
that rake in the moolah, albeit under the guise of public trusts.
Corporators have been known to “help” people, for a fee, to encroach on
public land or get plots dereserved. There are also ways to ensure a part of
the Rs-25-lakh discretionary fund lands in corporators’ pockets.
Another former autorickshaw driver, who has become a corporator, now
runs a credit society and a security agency besides renting out properties.
But he has not moved out of the Kurla slum; he has chosen to expand his
tenement by purchasing adjacent rooms.
When this reporter called up a corporator about some civic issue last
year, he grandly informed that he was at a south Mumbai five-star hotel
buying a Rs-1-lakh Mont Blanc pen.
Standing committee member Aslam Sheikh once bitterly complained about
how people did not know how to handle pens and had damaged his Rs 70,000
pen. Sheikh, a former Samajwadi Party and first-time Congress corporator,
admits to owning several such pens. “But I could afford these pens even
before I was a corporator. There has not been any change in my lifestyle.
Earlier I used to drive Scorpios, now I drive an Innova,” he said. But the
cat came out of the bag soon; trying to explain his riches, he said his
father was a corporator for three terms but the family owned two bakeries
even before that.
A veteran corporator owns a penthouse in central Mumbai, another has
hotels in the Konkan. Many have no qualms about justifying the corruption. A
corporator brazenly declares: “We are given Rs 4,600 a month as salary and a
bus pass. How do you run your family and do public service with this money?
So either he has to come from a moneyed background or strike deals to
support his family and career.”
MOST POLL HOPEFULS WILL WAIT FOR JAN 14 TO FILE NOMINATIONS TIMES NEWS
NETWORK
Mumbai: The gods are on vacation and there is nothing much that our aspiring
corporators can do but wait for them to return.
On Monday, when the ward offices will be ready to receive nominations
for the BMC elections, there will hardly be anyone filing his/her
nomination; the “inauspicious” Paush period comes to an end only on January
14 and most will for that.
“Malmas, Dhanumas or Kharmas is the period when all the gods are
generally believed to be resting and, hence, not available to shower any
kind of blessings on earth. It is, therefore, considered inauspicious to
carry out any important task during this period,” astrologer Vipul Saxena
said.
So political parties, too, are taking their time in announcing their
candidates for the elections. Most of them are expected to announce their
list only by January 10.
“Most of us do not want to risk it and spoil our chances. We prefer to
wait and file our nominations on January 14 when the this period will end,”
BJP corporator and group leader in BMC Parag Alavani said.
Congress corporator Sameer Desai echoed similar sentiments.
“I will, according to the advice of elders in my family, wait till
January 14 to file my nominations as I do not want to take chances,” he
said.
But there are a few exceptions who may just have to risk it.
“I may lose the nomination if I wait for the auspicious. There are so
many waiting to grab a ticket that I will have to take the gamble,” a
Congress hopeful said.